“And do you uplift savagery?”
“I don't wonder you're shocked, old chap, for from our civilized standpoint savagery is such deuced bad form. But you should consider; you should, really! Gad! you know that civilized city where we dwell; you know its civilized millions, fretting like maggots, as many as four thousand in a block; you know the good and the evil ground of those civilized mills! Wherein lieth a triumph over the red savage who abode upon the spot three centuries ago? Who has liberty as had that savage? He owned laws and respected them; he had his tribe, and was a patriot fit to talk with William Tell. He fought his foe like a Richard of England, and loved his friend like a Jonathan. He paid neither homage to power nor taxes to men, and his privileges were as wide as the world's rim. His franchises of fagot, vert, and venison had never a limit; he might kill a deer a day and burn a cord of wood to its cookery. As for his religion: the test of religion is death; and your savage met death with a fortitude, and what is fortitude but faith, which it would bother Christians to parallel. It may be said that he lived a happier life, saw more of freedom, and was more his own man, than any you are to meet in Broadway.”
Morton, beneath his fluff of cynicism, was a deal in earnest. The Reverend Bronson took advantage of it to say:
“Here, as you tell us, are we three, and all at the end of the journey. Here is that one who strove for power: here is that one who strove for wealth; here is that one who strove to help his fellow man. I give you the question: Brushing civilization and savagery aside as just no more than terms to mark some shadowy difference, I ask you: Who of the three lives most content?—for it is he who was right.”
“By the way!” said Morton, turning to me, as they were about to depart, and producing a scrap of newspaper, “this is what a scientist writes concerning you. The beggar must have paid you a call, don't y' know. At first, I thought it a beastly rude thing to put in print; but, gad! the more I dwell upon it, the more honorable it becomes. This is what he says of you:
“'There was a look in his eye such as might burn in the eye of an old wolf that has crept away in solitude to die. As I gazed, there swept down upon me an astounding conviction. I felt that I was in the presence of the oldest thing in the world—a thing more ancient than the Sphinx or aged pyramids. This once Boss, silent and passive and white and old, and waiting for the digging of his grave, is what breeders call a “throw-back”—a throw-back, not of the generations, but of the ages. In what should arm him for a war of life against life, he is a creature of utter cunning, utter courage, utter strength. He is a troglodyte; he is that original one who lived with the cave bear, the mastodon, the sabertoothed tiger, and the Irish elk.'”
They went away, the Reverend Bronson and Morton, leaving me alone on my bench between the beeches, while the black ravens picked and strutted about my feet, and my Sicilian on the lake at the lawn's foot matching his little ships for another race.